Lasse
Gerrits and I would like to thank the Health and Social Theory Research group at Durham University for the chance to present today on COMPLEX-IT.
Our presentation is based on The Atlas of Social Complexity,
a book we recently completed, which will be launched spring 2024. Organised
around six transdisciplinary themes and twenty-four topics the Atlas is an
invaluable resource for all social science and complexity science scholars and
students interested in new ideas and new ways of working in social complexity.
It paves the way for the next generation of research in the study of social
complexity.
One area of significant promise
is the emergence of configurational social science (Chapter 20 and Chapter 30),
which sits at the nexus of case-based configurational approaches – specifically
QCA – intersectionality theory, critical complexity, and complex systems
thinking.
QUICK OVERVIEW OF OUR PRESENTATION
While not widely recognized, the majority of
computational methods are case-based and configurational e.g., online websites
profiling users based on some configuration of factors. The challenge is making
these methods accessible to social scientists, including qualitative
researchers. Enter COMPLEX-IT, a freely available platform for users to explore
data using a bespoke suite of computational methods: cluster analysis, machine
learning, data visualisation, simulation, data forecasting and systems mapping.
A key strength of COMPLEX-IT is that is works with set theoretic data so that
users can explore their topic and its causality from a qualitative-comparative
perspective (QCA), including modelling set-theoretic data across time. In this lecture, we introduce the field of
configurative social science, the multi-methods involved in this approach and
their linkages to QCA, and then, as demonstration, a case study to explore how
COMPLEX-IT, a platform for multi-methods configurational research, can be used
to engage in a QCA approach using the latest developments in computational
methods.
HERE ARE
LINKS TO MATERIALS FROM OUR PRESENTATION
CLICK HERE to learn more about The Atlas of Social Complexity.
CLICK HERE for a link to our POWER POINT presentation.
CLICK HERE to explore COMPLEX-IT, including tutorials and example
dataset.
CLICKHERE for an introductory article
on COMPLEX-IT
CLICK HERE for the article that our mock dataset is based on: Gerrits, L., Pagliarin, S., Klein, K.
U., & Knieling, F. (2023). Tracing complex urban transformations in
Germany, Switzerland and Austria using trajectory-based qualitative
comparative analysis (TJ-QCA). Cities, 141, 104507.
CLICK HERE for the mock QCA Urban Transformation Datase
CLICK HERE for the mock DATA FORECASTING QCA Urban Transformation Datase